I thought about it, and then shook my head. “No, nothing felt wrong, and Sholto was with us when it happened.”

“How can the oath to the queen be mute?” Doyle asked.

“Did you take your oath willingly?” Frost asked.

Doyle nodded.

“I did not, but it was the only avenue left open to me, the only safety from the king’s mad pride.”

“You’re saying if the oath was coerced, then it’s not a true oath,” Doyle said.

“Perhaps,” Frost said.

“If they’re oathed to me for real, then they can’t be forced back to the queen.”

“The oath can’t force them back, but her rage and madness could.”

We had a moment of just sitting there thinking about it all. I finally said, “Being held sounds very good right now.”

“Then let us put away our weapons and huddle together,” Doyle said.

“The Darkness does not huddle,” Frost said.

“Nor does the Killing Frost,” Doyle said.

“I promise not to tell; just hold me, and tell me how to keep the king out of my dreams.”

I placed the relic, Aben-dul, on top of the headboard. We’d put it back in the weapons locker later. It was far too dangerous to leave lying about. Frost took back his knife, and we lay down with the two of them wrapped around me, and their long arms touching each other. The Darkness and the Killing Frost might not huddle, but I did, and unless there was a way to keep Taranis out of my dreams, I’d be doing more cuddling and less sleeping from now on. I’d never suffered from insomnia, but I was willing to learn.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

THE BABIES WERE all asleep in their cribs. Once I calmed down from the dream, I had to see them. I knew in all reason that they were safe, but fear isn’t always about reason; maybe fear is never about reason, but some fears are reasonable. I feared my uncle, and my aunt, that was reasonable, but I also feared that my babies had somehow been left inside my nightmare—not reasonable.

Kitto stood beside the crib with me. We held hands as we gazed down at Bryluen. She was curled into a tiny ball, as if she were still asleep inside me, trying to find room between her bigger siblings. We walked to Gwenwyfar, to see her white curls almost gleaming in the glow of the night light. Alastair was flopped on his back, arms and legs akimbo, as if he’d played hard and just collapsed where he was the way Liam did sometimes. Were boys so different from the very beginning than girls? I honestly didn’t know; there’d been no babies around me growing up, so my learning was all books and classes, and on-the-job training.

Kitto wrapped his arm around my waist, and I slid my arm across his shoulders. They were broader than when he’d first come to me, from Doyle’s insistence that the smaller man hit the weight room and even weapons practice. Kitto wasn’t expected to take his place among my guards, but Doyle wanted all of us to be able to defend ourselves. I had even joined the practice until I got too big with babies to move well, and the doctors started worrying that some of the training might cause premature labor. As soon as I healed I’d be back to it, because defending myself sounded awesome after my dream about Taranis. But then I had defended myself, hadn’t I?

“I swear to you, Merry, the babes have slept peacefully for hours.”

I hugged him. “You need to sleep, too, you know?”

He smiled up at me and then gazed at the babies, our babies. “I never thought I’d belong anywhere. I was tolerated among the goblins as long as I served a stronger warrior or his lady as their submissive toy, but if they tired of me, or one got jealous of me with the other, then they could cast me out, and masterless I was anyone’s meat.”

I put both my arms around him and held him close, resting my head on the top of his black curls; they were soft in texture, not like pure goblin hair, which ran to coarseness. “You’re ours now, Kitto.”

He hugged me back. “I have a family like I read about in books.”

“The goblins aren’t much for reading,” I said.

“Most are not, but my first mistress taught me how to read, and after that being able to read was an asset to my other masters and mistresses—as much as the sex sometimes.”

“So you read them to sleep?” I asked.

“Or read contracts to them, or modern newspapers.”

“I didn’t know the goblins cared about what was happening in the outside world.”

“Some do.”

I held him close, rubbing my cheek in the softness of his hair. I thought about all the long centuries that he had managed to survive in a culture that valued brute strength and power on the battlefield, and sex. It sounded like a desperate and lonely existence.

I tried to lighten the mood, because I needed it, too. “Good that you are learned, and fabulous at sex.”

“Sometimes I was too good at the sex,” he said.

I moved back enough to look into his face. “What do you mean? It’s not possible to be too good at sex.” I smiled when I said it, but he didn’t smile back.

“Several masters and mistresses became jealous that their lovers preferred me to them, and cast me out because of it.”

I gave him wide eyes and tried to think my way through that. I finally said the truth. “I’m amazed the jealous lovers didn’t just kill you for it.”

“Some tried, but the lovers that valued me stopped them, or even fought them in my defense.”

“You are very good in bed,” I said.

He smiled up at me. “But not that good, you’re thinking, not by goblin standards.”

“They like it very rough,” I said.

“In public, but in private many of them prefer gentler sex.”

I’d experienced that difference myself with Holly and Ash, the other goblins in our lives. If anyone knew they enjoyed gentle sex, their reputation would be damaged, so I said nothing, not even to Kitto.

“And if their secret got out that they’d enjoyed that with you, they would be ruined.”

“It would be seen as weakness, and that is always challenged among my people.”

“Your mother was sidhe, Kitto; we are your people as much as the goblins.”

He smiled, and it was a happier one this time. “I was not raised sidhe, Merry, so I will always think of myself as goblin. The sidhe were these impossibly beautiful, magical beings, and the fact that I carried their skin and hair appealed to the goblins that had a fetish for the touch of sidhe flesh.”

“It is a serious fetish among the goblins,” I said.

“It’s what led to so many rapes in the wars between the two races. The sidhe will not voluntarily share themselves with a goblin.”

I leaned over and kissed him softly, gently, but thoroughly. “This is one part-sidhe princess who volunteers eagerly.”

His face lit up, filled with happiness. “And I will serve you in any way I can for as long as you will have me.”

“Kitto, I’m not planning on casting you out, you know that, don’t you?”

His happy looks slipped a little around the edges. “If my goblin king calls me home, Merry, there is nothing you can do but let me go.”

“You are sidhe now; I have brought you into your power, which means the goblins can’t call you from my side, Kitto.”